


What You Smell Like

by Gearsmoke



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fan Art, M/M, Masturbation, Memories, Oops, Pining, Snake Senses, clothes sniffing, idiots through history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 00:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21498766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gearsmoke/pseuds/Gearsmoke
Summary: Just thinking about that one line in the show.Crowley gives in to a desire he thinks he can get away with.Art with fic accompaniment.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 252





	What You Smell Like

1996.  
  
It had been a throwaway comment, 'I'm going to an estate auction at Sotheby's tomorrow.', just the sort of casual information friends give away over lunch, hardly anything to get excited about. Such sales rarely included anything that interested the demon, but he didn't begrudge Aziraphale his love of antiques, even if it bordered on a hoarding situation (one that threatened to spill over into Crowley's home as the angel tried to make room every so often and considered making gifts of such objects preferable to selling them off.) But what Crowley _heard_ was opportunity scratching at his door.  
  
It had become increasingly difficult to winkle Aziraphale out of his shop over the last couple centuries. They might go out for a meal on rare occasions, maybe a show, but he never stayed out for long. The angel invariably fretted and gravitated back to his paper-filled nest at the earliest opportunity; and while Crowley was concerned for him, he hadn't yet figured out what he could do. He was an empathic creature by nature, and he did his best to be supportive, keep the angel's spirits up in the ways he knew how, but Crowley missed his best friend.

The Sotheby's auction would take most of the afternoon, and Crowley smiled when Aziraphale mentioned it. "Sounds like fun." He'd raised his beer and winked. It'd be good for his angel to get out for a while. Out of the shop for quite a while, in fact.

Crowley approached the bookshop, its windows dark, the sign in front turned to 'closed'. The door unlocked at the demon's touch and let him in. He wrinkled his nose at the familiar musty odor in the public part of the shop, crossing through the stacks to Aziraphale's private sitting room, where the air abruptly freshened, dust and mildew giving way to a more pleasant blend of tea, leather, and orange oil.

The demon ran his fingertips over the back of Aziraphale's favored chair, and then settled himself into it, running his hands up and down the upholstered arms. He took his sunglasses off, left them on the rolltop desk, and sat back in the plush seat. He could feel Aziraphale, in the chair, in the desk, - the whole place was infused with the angel, _smelled_ like him. Crowley let his tongue split and grow sensitive, and he flicked the tip out into the air.  
  
_I remember holding you, when things were bad, and we were alone in the worst of it. I remember the taste of iron and salt on your skin when I kissed your forehead and told you I'd take care of your duties so you could rest. I remember the warmth of your mouth on the edge of a cup when things were good, and the smell of your wing above me when everything was new._

Inhaling, he noticed a fresher hint of Aziraphale's cologne wafting from somewhere behind him. Turning, Crowley noticed a new coatrack nestled next to the spiral staircase, and hanging there, a soft heathered cardigan.  
  
Standing, rounding the chair, Crowley approached the coatrack, and plucked the coat from its hook. Aziraphale must have been wearing it just that morning. His human nose could pick up the complexity of ginger, orange blossom, pine and vetiver. But he flickered his sensitive tongue over the fabric and the distinct chemistry of _angel_ unfurled into his brain. The demon shivered, clutching the cardigan, feeling a sudden swell of warmth and static roll up his back and then sink down between his hips.  
  
Yes, this would do perfectly.

This sort of thing, breaking into Aziraphale's home, touching his things, inhaling the ghost of him, was not new. It had started – well, the first time Crowley knew where Aziraphale was staying, and when he'd be away from that place. Must have been around, oh, the first half of the ninth century, when Aziraphale finally began to entertain his talk about forming an alliance. It had taken a lot of wine and acts of good faith, and Crowley was proud of himself.

Aziraphale had been keeping a berth in a longhouse in Denmark, working to maintain peace between the Pantheistic Scandinavians to the north, and the Christians to the south with whom they were butting borders. Crowley followed in the angel's wake, making mischief where he could, lending credence to certain Norse legends, and eventually found the angel sharing mead and meat with the Viking leaders.

Creeping into Aziraphale's tiny room – more a corner with a hide partition, really – had been simple curiosity at the time. He wanted to know what his counterpart was up to, and thought he might find a clue. Instead he found himself holding a well-worn deerskin vest against his cheek, drunk on the angel's scent and trying not to weep in unresolved frustration.

In the present, the practice had become routine: _Wait, watch. Slip in, take what you need, get out before he comes back._ Crowley put the cardigan on, let it wrinkle around his frame, little more than a coatrack himself. He eased back into the chair, rubbing the soft jersey fabric to make it warm and release more of that unique perfume. With a sigh, Crowley took it in, let it both soothe and inflame him. He pressed the heel of his hand against his groin and rocked his hips up against it, already hard, Pavlovian.

He unbuttoned his fly, no underwear for the occasion, and his prick sprung up as soon as he tugged it out, growing fully erect in his hand. Languidly stroking himself, he sank back into sense-memory, eyes drifting shut.  
  
It hadn't been hard to steal the vest. He took it back to the inn where he kept a room - a real, walled, private room – and kept it tucked under his pillow until it lost all traces of Aziraphale. He'd taken a scarf next, woven from the silk-fine wool of a breed of goat now forgotten. Its fibres held onto the angel for decades, but it too eventually became just a scrap of fabric, smelling of Crowley and nothing else.  
  
In 1208, Aziraphale had been assigned to Saint-Denis, near Paris, to assist in the upcoming Christian crusade, while Crowley had been sent to Cologne, in Germany, to foil it. When they met up later, it was roundly counted as a point for Hell, but _not_ for Crowley, who'd considered the loss of life a ridiculous waste, and had only accepted credit for so much as being there so he could fuck off on Earth for a while.

Ultimately, they'd both had about the same amount of influence over how the crusade went, and that was very little. It was decided that wine and mutual distraction was the best possible order of the night, and when they had gotten the exact right level of drunk, Aziraphale had leant toward Crowley and gently kissed him, lighting a fuse in the demon that would eventually lay waste to him completely.  
  
In the morning, Aziraphale had wondered where his chemise had gotten to, while elsewhere, Crowley brought himself off to his angel's scent for the first time.

The following two centuries had them caught in a strange dance of affection and denial: each unguarded moment followed by passive-aggressive excuses and years apart. In 1327, they had been sitting together at a fire in Cordoba, comparing notes in the small of the night. They'd both been tasked with observing as the Christians completed their reclamation of Muslim Spain, After a third bottle of wine, Aziraphale had become cuddly, and then drifted into rare sleep, nestled like a kitten into Crowley's bedroll. The demon stroked his companion's pale curls, slipping free a length of silk ribbon, fragrant with the angel's sweat and the oil he used in his hair. Crowley brought the ribbon to his mouth, inhaled, and closed his eyes as a blissful shiver took him, making his skin bump and his groin ache. Glancing down at his companion with only a minute flicker of guilt, he quickly hid the strip of fabric in his pack, smiled at his sleeping friend, and slipped out into the arid countryside.

And then the entire world, as far as he knew, went to _shit. I don't want to think about that. Something else, anything else._

1476, right in the middle of some of Crowley's happiest years. He'd been thrilled with how southern Europe was progressing, the people taking beautifully to some well-placed suggestions regarding science and art, and he could finally relax now that the movement was established and rolling along under its own steam.  
  
When Aziraphale joined him in Italy, the angel didn't understand what the demon's motivation was. Encouraging humans to create and invent didn't seem very evil, even after Crowley explained about knowledge and secularism. Being perfectly happy to show his companion what he'd been doing, Crowley introduced Aziraphale to a wonderfully talented friend of his, an impish young artist the demon had taken under his wing – metaphorically – certain the boy would become great.  
  
Leo was clever, and creative, and so wickedly funny. If Crowley could have loved a human, if he had been given the power to gift a single man immortality, he was sure it would have been Leo. The man was great, surpassing all of his hopes, changing the world in the way only a mortal can. And Aziraphale had held the demon with knowing kindness when the bright candle of Leo's life burned out.

Crowley had kissed the angel that time, and Aziraphale responded by telling him that Heaven was about to launch a new program of observation on Earth, meaning his activity was going to be watched with far greater scrutiny. They needed to be more careful, Aziraphale had warned, they couldn't be caught. The consequences terrified the angel – for him it would mean another demotion at the least. For Crowley... the most likely penalty was death.

When they parted, Crowley had one of the angel's satin gloves folded under his tunic. It didn't quite fit his long, slender fingers, even with a nudge of magic, but he still wore out the palm of it, sobbing Aziraphale's name a thousand times.

In the bookshop, in the 20th century, Crowley moaned and shook, his legs falling open. He tugged the collar of the cardigan up so he could trace the tips of his tongue over the seam that held the strongest scent, gathering celestial atoms at the roof of his mouth and whimpering at the delicious shudder they triggered.

_Close, close..._ He tucked one of his heels up, digging it into the old brocade, if he tore the seat of the chair he'd have to fix it, Aziraphale would never know. _Fuck,_ he almost wanted Aziraphale to know, to see him like this, to know it was _because_ of the angel. He licked his palm again and stroked it over the head of his cock, tugging the foreskin back and teasing the underside with his fingertips before wrapping his palm around the length and stroking in earnest. The coat around him was so warm, so full of his angel, he could almost imagine he was being held, being loved. Something jingled.

“Ah... ah, yes. Just – Nngh!” Crowley let his head fall back, pleasure sizzled up his spine, spread outward through his nervous system like ink in water, claimed him and dragged him up into its summit. He groaned, back arching and teeth sinking into the meat of his lower lip, his fist a blur on his hot, bruise-dark cock. He might have whined, he might have cried, “Angel!” His hips rolling, the liquid fire of his climax surging up in a wave, a swell that breached the surface of him, arcing in the cool, dark air, and landing in a subtle patter on the Anatolian rug.

... _Something jingled._

Crowley opened his eyes. His blown pupils focused on shoes. His shoes... and Aziraphale's. And a spatter-trail of semen between them. _Shit. SHIT._ He released his spent prick and tugged his shirt down, as if covering himself at this point would solve anything, and then slowly dragged his guilty gaze upward.

“ _Dear._ ” Aziraphale said, his tone very soft, yet very stern, “I thought we talked about this.”

[ ](https://i.imgur.com/8jxWld6.jpg)

[Click for bigger](https://i.imgur.com/8jxWld6.jpg)


End file.
